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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Part:         Session:         Page of 1143

you, and I've given my own money, and have urged other people to give their own money. But I've found, as Albert Lasker said to me when he asked me what I was interested in, and I told him, his reply to me then was, “You don't need my kind of money, you need Federal money, and I will show you how to get it,” because the problems are so enormous and have to be attacked on such a large scale in order to get anything in any relatively short space of time that there's no reason why Federal money shouldn't be used. Federal money is only our money in another pocket.

Q:

At that point, then he pointed the finger in the right direction.

Lasker:

Absolutely, yes. It was entirely his idea.

Q:

What was being done abroad at that time, in England and in the Scandinavian countries?

Lasker:

Well, are you talking about 1943 or after the war? In 1943 practically nothing was going on, because the war was taking all their energy, largely. After the war, in 1949, we went to see Aneurin Bevan, who was then the Minister of Health, and we asked him how much money was being spent for medical research, and I'm not sure that he knew, but we found out at the time. He was not at all interested in medical research, not a bit. But we found out that the British Government in '49 was spending





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